INNOVATIONBLOG

You want to do something: an excursion, a lesson, a project, an adventure, an experience, something cool. But you don’t know who will join you, and how you’ll pay. DoWhop is the P2P marketplace for your activities. Now you can buy and sell what you do!

The model is simple: First list what you plan to do or book someone else’s listed experience. Then meet your new friends in person and “do whop” you love. Want to go diving? DoWhop. Learn Chinese? DoWhop. Build a robot? DoWhop. Spin a plane? DoWhop. The sky is no longer the limit. On this open marketplace you can connect with interesting people and coordinate the perfect experience together. Whatever it is, DoWhop.

We met DoWhop’s founder, Rae Lietzau, at San Diego Startup Week where she took part in the Idea Competition powered by Ideator. Now her company is redefining how we do what we love. This Christmas don’t buy stuff, give moments! Read on to see how Rae, a non-technical founder, is tackling her biggest challenges on the marketplace for doing.

How does DoWhop work?EXPLORE experiences offered by cool people & Connect with your communityCREATE opportunities for others to join -or- Request an exclusive experienceDO what you love with your new friends & buy and sell opportunities

How did you come up with the idea?
Just like you, I have so many activities I love to share, and so many experiences I wish to do. Yet I constantly find myself asking “I am doing this, who is with me!?” It can be really hard to reach the right people with the right interests and the right skills at the right time with the right budget. Finding friends and funds seems unnecessarily painful, so I decided to invite the whole world and let the perfect participant find me. Now we can all connect over what we do on the marketplace for doing.

What’s been the hardest challenge you’ve faced & how have you overcome it?
Learning tech. It’s a problem I face everyday. It’s by working with the nitty gritty tech stuff that I’ve truly refined my vision for DoWhop. But working my way through different languages and tutorials is a very tedious process. I’ve been slowly learning the ins and outs of building a tech company, but I am far from being a tech-expert. It’s been a long road of late night tutorials and self-imposed projects, with an even longer road ahead. But I believe understanding what goes into building my website and mobile application will help make me a better partner to my future CTO.

Where do you see your company in the future?
DoWhop is the marketplace for doing. Right now you have sites where you buy things and sites where you “meet” people. In the future you’ll have this site to do things with people: DoWhop.

Positioned at the intersection of the sharing economy and the gig economy, you’ll turn to DoWhop when: you’re adventuring and you want a companion, you’re bored and you want an activity, you’re creating and you want a hand, and you’re discovering and you want a guide. Whether you want to make money doing what you love, or you want to meet someone with the resources you’d like, you’ll come to us. DoWhop will be the world’s one stop shop for doing.

How are you using Ideator? How has it helped you get more wins for your idea?
I use Ideator to share some mockups and designs with a broader audience. Using Ideator has helped me refine how I explain the business to others. Having a platform like Ideator, where I can receive feedback from interested people, is so invaluable at this stage.

DoWhop is looking for motivated beta users!
I would love to have some awesome people who do incredible things give it a try: www.DoWhop.com. Right now I am still in private beta, but if I can source enough talent here in San Diego, then I can publicly launch DoWhop in ‘America’s Finest City’. So grab your quirky neighbor, your talented relative, and you adventurous friend, and log on to the site! Now is the time to do whop you love.

You heard it! Jump in and test it out today. Try something new or get paid to do what you love! You can connect with Rae on Ideator, here.